


all that remains

by bubblewrapstargirl



Category: Grimm (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Post-Break Up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-16
Updated: 2017-02-16
Packaged: 2018-09-24 19:27:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9781802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bubblewrapstargirl/pseuds/bubblewrapstargirl
Summary: Adalind grows immune to the suppressant potion due to frequent use. She doesn't tell Nick.





	

She is radiant in the sunlight filtering in from the slats of his living room blinds, her hair a golden halo. He watches the hem of her skirt smoothly glide up her thighs as she crosses her legs; the shoe of her higher leg suspended in the air, dangling from her delicate foot as she bounces her heel. He longs to reach out and gently push the shoe back into place, and he might have once, back when such privileges were granted. She would never allow him to touch her so intimately now.

 

She is irreverent in her casual slouch, eyes glancing around the room she once helped furnish, with disinterest. He wants to reach out and grasp her shoulders, shake her and demanded that she look at him. That she talks to her son.

 

The boy is so eager, bringing her pictures and kindergarten assignments for her to fawn over. Her enthusiasm is so fake as to make him cringe, but he warned her not to come if she couldn't at least pretend to love their child. He has wanted to retract the demand as soon as it left his mouth; an easy way out for her to shake her responsibilities once and for all. He had nearly preempted her reply. Not wanting to hear that she no longer loved their child the way she’d fallen out of love with him. 

 

Her response had surprised him. She insisted that she loved her son, that the return of her powers didn't make her inhuman. She’d been so broken when they took her daughter, and that was long before she began suppressing her inner Hexenbeist. Of course her feelings for the boy are just as deep as they ever were. He doesn't know if that makes it worse- knowing it's just him she cannot stand.

 

Their boy misses her presence, is resentful toward his father sometimes in his grief. As though he is at fault: he drove her away. He supposed he did, in a sense. Whatever deficiency it was in him that caused her to stop loving him enough to take the suppressant potion, which had been like a medication to her when they were together. He had driven her to abandon it, and their family, somehow.

 

He had thought nothing could feel worse than coming home to see she had cleared out the loft, and taken their child to live with another man. He was wrong. At least he could comfort himself back then with the knowledge it was under duress, that she loved him and had no desire to be parted from him. Now, there is nothing. 

 

She chose to leave them both, chose a nomad’s life with her daughter, teaching her the black arts the same way her mother tutored her. Gone is the woman he loved, usurped by the witch he despised: the one that always lived in her skin, hidden and suppressed, but never destroyed.

 

He watches as the fair, fake smile fades from her face when their boy leaves to put away the toys she has gifted him. The child can't see through it now, but it won't be long before he sees the sour core inside. 

 

He doesn't know what he’ll do when his son comes to him with questions he has no answers for. Why did she leave them? Why then, years after she had given up her power - what dark force was so alluring, so appealing that she followed its siren call out of their lives? His passion for her has turned to a hatred of equal strength in his inability to understand, to empathise. To begin to explain.

 

She once promised to never hurt him. When he meets her cool gaze now, the frost he finds there is almost enough to convince him that time never existed. It seems like a dream, a haze; he knows now it was an illusion, a mirage of a life that was never his to keep. The sun has shifted and he sees the harsh desert for what it is: barren and inhospitable. Tears will be no use now: her arid plane is unmoved, so parched a few droplets make no impact at all.

 

He begged her to come home, shouted and screamed at her unmoving face. And when they dragged him away he finally broke and pleaded on bended knee, she turned her face away until he was gone from her sight. He won't stoop to beg again. 

 

He knows the answer remains the same.  

 

The shoe almost drops from her foot, but she lowers her calf in time, gracefully setting it into place and rising in one fluid movement. She glides away from him like ice over water, smooth and cold. He doesn't stay to watch her leave: the call of her voice as she bids goodbye to their son, the following click of the door, are enough.

 

The house is still, silent, the golden light burning into the empty silence left in her wake.

**Author's Note:**

> In the end all that remains are numbers, the measurement of distances, the quantity of things.


End file.
